I just finished The Room 2. The first in the series was great: gorgeous graphics, challenging puzzles, a little thin on story perhaps but very atmospheric. The second was nowhere near as good. The graphics aren't as attractive, and the puzzles are mostly simplistic inventory puzzles.

They gave themselves a tough act to follow, but it was still a disappointment. The Room 3 has already been out for a while, but the reviews aren't exactly stellar. I may pick it up anyway if the price drops enough, but I'm not expecting a whole lot from it.

I finished a series of games called Cube Escape. They're weird, creepy, and gory, but if you don't mind that, the first game in the series is quite good. It's called Cube Escape: Seasons. The entire series is available on iStore as a free download.

On Easter I finished a really interesting game Inside. It's a bit hard to describe it entirely but keywords that apply are: 2D on 3D background, side scrolling, haunting, dystopia, puzzle, fascinating, scary, shocking, moody. I didn't really know much of this game before playing it but now it went to my top 10 recent games.

The Witness is a 3D first person view puzzle game that utilizes the same concept of puzzle throughout the game. I enjoyed it a while but since the game is really repetitive I gave up.

And you know what - these days we have enough of everything. So below are two lists. If you see the same name twice it means that I have the game on multiple platforms

Tried Devil May Cry. The graphics aren't bad, but they're garish, and it's yet another game full of hideous monsters in yet another ugly dystopia. Plus, the player is given zero agency. The entire game is nothing but Fight - Fight - Fight - Fight - Cutscene; rinse and repeat. I never even got a dialogue option. You play a preset character named Dante. I didn't play long enough to figure out whether he's a reluctant hero or an antihero, but he's certainly a curmudgeonly sort, despite his apparent youth. He's the sort of character that will seem cool to adolescent males and rather obnoxious to most everyone else. But even though I barely got started, I have a sneaking suspicion that I've already guessed the big reveals at the end of the game. I probably shouldn't post my guesses tho in case I'm right. If you like games that are nothing but fighting and a mere pretense of a story, you'd probably find it a fun romp, but its not my cup of tea.

Tried Remember Me. The graphics are high-definition and well-rendered, but it's yet another game full of hideous monsters in yet another ugly dystopia. The story is presented more organically than it is in Devil May Cry, but gameplay is similar: fighting and cutscenes. Remember Me starts the game with yet another protagonist suffering memory loss. Based on what I saw of the story, this cliche has more reason for being used in Remember Me than in most stories, but its still an overused cliche, and because the protagonist knows nothing of herself, the player can't know anything about her and therefore withholds sympathy which is a dangerous way to start a story when the story is a bizarre SciFi world in which humanity has become addicted to memory recordings and the protagonist just had her memory wiped by the big bad evil corporation and now she's trying to escape corporate goons, corporate robots, and deformed monsters who were once human beings. I mean, its not as though many of us can relate to something like that. Just the same, I might have played longer, but the controls seemed finicky and unresponsive. Some may enjoy it, but it wasn't my cup of tea.

Tried Metro: Last Light. It's an FPS with good quality graphics, but it's yet another game full of hideous monsters in yet another ugly dystopia. Again, you as the player seem to have no agency beyond how much you dawdle between the various fights. Instead of cutscenes, NPCs discuss current events when you approach. Until they run out of dialogue and fall silent. Your character never speaks and never interacts with other characters aside from moving close enough to trigger speech from them. The combat was a little fast-paced for me, but the moment I turned off the game was when it waited until I was losing a firefight to teach me how to change the filter in my gas mask. I didn't get it changed, I didn't win the fight, and I didn't keep playing. Someone who is better at FPS games will probably enjoy it more than I did, unless - like me - you don't relish the prospect of a game where you can't ever take the time to explore because your character's air is running out. And it runs out FAST. If running and shooting is your style, it would probably be fun for you, but it's not my cup of tea.

Played thru the intro of Rain. It has an intriguing premise. It appears to be about sneaking rather than combat, and it has me wanting to know more about what's going on. There's a monster, but I think it's the only one, and I wouldn't characterize the world as a dystopia based on what I've seen so far. It has the potential to be something quite special, and I look forward to giving it a try.